14 DAY TRIAL // Lasers are, at their core, beams of highly focused light. Such light can be harmless, or potentially hazardous if aimed at someone's eyes. The stronger ones can melt things, even metals. It is the latter that an artists by the name of Markus Kayser decided to emulate.
And we do mean emulate, not create. He hasn't used any laser technology in the making of his 3D printer. And a very unusual 3D printer it is.
Called SolarSinter, the contraption uses a large fresnel lens to focus all the sunlight passing through it into a single point.
That highly focused beam is hot enough to melt sand, which is exactly what Kayser is having it do: build objects out of sand.
He doesn't expect to get any sort of precision and grace out of his creation, but it's not bad as a project meant to help him spend his spare time.
How the technology differs from all the others
First off, it's a lot less precise, as we said, because the sunbeam, or sunspot, is far bigger than what you might have grown to expect. Several inches across instead of several microns.
Also, instead of the sand being deposited bit by bit, or patch by patch, there's a big tray, or rather box, where it gets poured.
Moreover, you obviously can't do anything with this thing during the night, or even the early mornings or afternoon. Unless you have some really mean solar lamps, and probably not even then.
On the flip side, there is a certain charm to an inherently imprecise technology. It lets you turn out much more natural structures.
Take the example in the video embedded below. The artist spends a while shining his lens on top of the sand, melting it again and again, section by section. The result is a very intricate system of miniature “cliffs” that would look like the best landmark ever if they existed in nature on the same scale as the Grand Canyon.
Plans for the SolarSinter
We haven't heard of any, and we can't see the product used for anything other than the occasional sculpture. Definitely nothing manufacturing-related in any event, industry-wise. That's fine, though. Art needs a certain degree of effort and creativity, and as far as 3D printing technologies go, this is one of the best melds of human intervention and “natural” progression. Insofar as the sun melting sand can be considered natural for Earth anyway.
